Enhancing Student Engagement in Unit Operations Laboratory through Augmented Reality

A chemical engineering student's knowledge of theory, experimental design, and real-world processes is tested and enforced in the Unit Operations laboratory courses. However, instructors are facing challenges of delivering high-quality, hands-on laboratory content with limited resources and increasingly large class sizes. Limited in-lab time is often inefficiently allocated to individualized instruction, which broadly diminishes students' opportunity for learning by restricting the quantity of data they are able to collect. In addition, teaching in-person laboratories with social distancing measures during the pandemic posed significant logistical and safety challenges and required alternative techniques to be explored and adapted. The technological strategies implemented in this work aimed to manage laboratory course content more efficiently by enhancing familiarization, operation, and safety of lab equipment during and prior to class time. This work demonstrates the evolution of several technological tools that evaluated synchronous hybrid lab offerings and asynchronous prelab training using remote controlled cameras, web-interfaces, and augmented reality. The effectiveness of the implemented technologies was assessed via post course surveys and both negative and positive students' responses were discussed.